good morning from new york. i'm chris hayes. in his weekly radio address president obama marked the second anniversary of the end of u.s. combat or operations in iraq and reminded americans of the, quote, still difficult work ahead of us in afghanistan. and more than 5,000 louisiana residents remain in emergency shelters as the remnants of isaac move north along the gulf coast. but first my story of the week. america lost.

this week the republican party gathered in tampa to tell a terrible and tragic tale of american decline. they couldn't quite say that explicitly, of course. this is the party of reagan and sunny optimism or so they'd like to present themselves. but you couldable help notice that the three days of speeches on the convention floor were an orgy of days gone by. the packaging for this message was an insist stent indication of american greatness. as rachel maddow's team covered it, almost every single speaker told a story of upward mobility usually taken from their own family's past, tracing the arc of the american dream that brought them to the podium. >> my dad got his first job when he was 6 years old. >> my dad was a truck driver. >> my dad grew up in poverty. >> my dad came from nothing.

>> working in a meet-packing town. >> as a way dough. >> didn't have much. >> basement apartment. pasta and tuna fish. >> single mother. >> working class. >> working class. >> came from nothing. >> she got on a bus. >> took three different buses. >> every workday for years. >> every day to get to work. >> cleaning sheep pens. >> poor farm boar. >> working on the coal mines. >> welch coal miner. >> they both lived hard lives. >> paycheck to paycheck. >> $10 in their pockets. >> make 50g krenltss an hour. >> teenager with nothing, not at a penny. >> part of this is just standard political trickle, a way for, sark an extremely wealthy prep school graduate like ann romney to seem relatable. but the reason this was such a dominant theme was the republican party's platform are zealously committed to the notion of american exceptionalism and when people talk about american exceptionalism, this is what they usually mean, that america was difrp and better than other

countries, particularly its ancestors in europe. that america unblemished by the legacy of few tillism, a land without noblism is where each man could rise to any station in life. >> america was founded on the principle that every person has god-given rights. >> founded on the belief that power belongs to the people, that government exists to protgt our rights and serves our interest and no one should be trapped in the circumstances of their birth. we should be free to go as far as our talents and our work can take us. >> or as mike huckabee put it -- >> our founding fathers let taxation and tierney, seeking religious liberty and a society of meritocracy rather than air stock rahcy. >> we should note there's something more than a little audio about the celebration of

american air tock kracy to nominate a governor turned presidential candidate who rose from humble origins of a son, a convention this on the same night in which mike huckabee decried the aristocracy of foreign lands featured rand paul uncorking the liberty of goodstrap stories shortly before a video that celebrate the last two republican presidents, one the son and the other the son of a senator. oddly the stories did not revolve around the speaker's experience but rather that of their hard-working relatives and ancestors. it struck me as we listened to this as a slightly odd note, a backward looking tour of nostalgia for an meramerica thae are losing. of course, that's precisely the message and a potent one.

it's based on a core reality. the dream of american mobility is slipping away. we all know about the extreme and accelerating inequality. mobility is harder to measure than inequality but nearly all studies show it has plateaued or declined for the past several decades. 43% of those born into the poorest fifth of households will stay there while only 4% will make it to the richest. only 8% fall down to the poorest. those born rich stay rich and those born poor stay poor just like the bygone air stock ck rahcies. while the gop won't put it in those terms, they understand this. the un's and anxiety and desperation it has caused in voters. and they have a story to tell about why it happened.

it's not the excesses of global capitalism or american finances or the rigged game of tenties who have captured washington. instead it is barack obama who in three quick years single-handedly shifted america away toward an ethos of handouts, welfare, and dependence. >> we have a president who wants his party to make us all dependent on government. >> let me give you a government check. >> people are dependent on the government. >> the number of people on food stamps has increased by 45%. >> obama's waving of the work care requirements. >> creating dependency. >> government handouts and dependen dependency. >> under president obama the dream of freedom and opportunity has become a nightmare of dependency. >> that's the message. the american dream is drying because the first black president is doling out food

starps and welfare checks to the lazy and insew lent. he's seducing americans, zapping our ingenuity and in the process making us in some deep ex existential sense less american. it's a trend that started well before barack obama took office. the increase of those using the social safety net simply is not barack obama's doing. it's the product of the financial crisis and the great recession. in fact, if anything, our safe unit has been remarkably stingy. despite the fact that 2.6 million more people were living in poverty at the end of 2010 than in 2009, only an additional enrolled in welfare. and despite a small increase in food stamp eligiblelabiliteligi

barack obama has not expanded food stamp el inlability. in fact, the last two came under george w. bush. it earned an "i vote" under paul ryan. it's about telling voters that the undeceiving are make out like bandits while they're being robbed of their just desserts. as clint eastwood said on the final night to ear-shattering applause, we own this country, and someone else, someone who's not taken it away stole it and given it to those other people over there. it's an ugly message but in a time of anxiety and diminished expectations, not a stupid one.

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. on this van pyrrhic reason after the rnc we burp into vampire weekend. bob herbert, syndicated columnist david sirota, co-host of "the run done with sirota and brown." has an amazing new article in "harper's" this month. a nay marie cox and josh barro

with news ticker. it's great to have you all here. welcome to the table. well, we had the republican convention this week. maybe you saw it. i want to start with the theme of the convention, the "we built this" theme. >> there was one? >> if the goal of the convention was to successfully control liberals, mission accomplished. it drove me bonkers. maybe that was the point anyway. maybe they like having people like me wants to claw their eyes out. we know the background, the president was talking about the infrastructure and support the building of businesses. when he said you've got a business, you didn't build that. he was referring to the bridges and roads. it has been misunderstood and made into their calling card i was going to say, can anyone think of another example when there's been an off script moment by a candidate was turned

into the theme? >> what was the theme going to be until he said that? were the speech writers sitting around thinking i have nothing and then he said that and they said, yes. >> john kerry. >> that wasn't a theme. they didn't have signs that said i voted for it before i voted against it. i mean it's the -- >> like the theme would be voted for it. still for it. >> actually bump per sticker applause line, you know. that's what i was going to say. did you notice there was a theme to the convention? it was such a haphazard kind of convention. i've been to a few, and, yes, they're always kind of chaotic. the one thing they had to come back to was mocking obama. this is what the eastwood speech meant to me. this was true of ryan's speech

as well. there were these stumbles and once you hit all those cliches, once you start raising the oceans, we built this gulf, i don't know, then you start to get people to coalesce around it. i don't know about you but when i talked to actual convention goers, that's what got them going. >> that's what excite them. >> yes. >> i think there are two things in the 11-minute presentation by iconic clint eastwood. here's a little montage of "we built this" drumbeat. >> don't tell me that my parents didn't build their business. >> because we built it. >> yeah, we do build it. >> they learned english. >> he move to a small town. >> a small hardware store. >> one he built by himself, by the way.

>> mr. president, they did build it. >> no one dared tell americans you didn't build that. >> mitt romney was not handed success. he built it. >> he did build that. >> you did build that. >> is it true? yes, you did build that. >> and that -- the thinks that drives me crazy, they're inside a publicly funded stadium. so in a sense we built it -- >> in a hurricane zone. >> but we, the people built it. the visual image is actually of the opposite point that they're making. they're either on libbous to it or everybody's oblivious to it but they're literally sitting in a building that was built by taxpayers that proves obama's point. >> i think liberals are laboring here. if people listened to that whole speech from obama they wouldn't

be oh femded by it and they would agree by the message. i think that's wrong. yes, he misspoke and he meant to talk about infrastructure but what he's saying is he's criticizing businesspeople for taking too much credit. he's always struck by people who say, i was so hard-working. people are put off by that. and they're put off by the elizabeth warren marks. >> they're wrong, but they are. if you tell people, particularly successful people, i just wrote a book and i got e-mails like i'm a good liberal and i like your book but don't tell me i didn't work hard or earn what i have. the idea that -- it's an extreme core story we talk about.

it's borne of a whole variety of preconditions. >> there is a sub text here that the real theme of the republican party. want to make the point after listening to these republicans, my childhood wasn't that bad but when they started talking about -- i've been saying the republican party has been a party with out a theme in this presidential election but the truth is they even gotten a theme that they can't speak and that theme is a racial theme and when they start talking you built it or we built it and when wiestwood starts talking about we own this country, everybody in that hall knows what they're talking about and it would seem to me a lark part of america knows what they're talking about. running against obama in a painstaking way of trying to paint him as the other and that is the primary theme of this party. it has been for a long time but

it balance for a long time. >> the next clause is just because since we're talking about taking things out of context it struck me too. but then politicians work for us. it was an endorsement of the republican virtues and -- >> i would buy that if it wasn't -- >> talking to an invisible chair? the birther movement, the pressure of the vote and on and on. >> a lot of it is conscious. some of it but not all of it. i also want to say there's a weakness in obama when he does say these things like you didn't build that and he has this -- the reason why i think he gets conservatives so fired up is he is intellectual and consist tenl

and condescending. that's our president's real weakness when it comes to communicating with voters. >> i don't think that's a main thrust of him rhetorically. >> i think that's what they pick up on. >> we built this thing, you have to think in their cob tent of the portrayal of obama. they keep talking about the people who worked so hard. the implicit message is they are lazy, they want these government handouts. >> that's why if you put it in the context of the nostalgia and there was a lot of rag aboeagan language, i think if you look at what they're pining for. to go backward, it's not spoken. it may not be spoken.

we want to go back to a time where we -- the african-americans didn't have power. >> there are obvious appeals to racial resentment in this campaign and previous cycles. i think the best examples of that is the basically made up attack on welfare reform and i think the objective is to fire these. a guy sent me a really racist e-mail. >> hold this story. i want you to tell us the story but i want you to tell us not to -- right after we take this break. ♪ it means cleaner, cheaper american-made energy. but we've got to be careful how we get it.

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in the context of let's not overread the subtext of this team as necessarily one predicated on white folks toward the first african-american president. i want you to tell the story and take it back to you. >> i wrote this critical piece on paul ryan's speech and i got an e-mail the next morning that opens by asking me whether i was performing certain sexual acts on the president and then goes on and basically says what obama and his hand lers, what their real goal is to take the money from and use it for -- and he uses a racial slur for black people and the gays and the lesbos. then i see it's from the business i'm account of a senior manager at a major real estate investment trust and so i respond to it and i copy their v.p. for communications and basically say i don't think you

should send racial e-mails to reporters from your work i'm and i got an e-mail. they fired the guy like very quickly. so the company handled it very appropriately. >> so you were saying about it not being a racial subtext. there is and that's very real and i think a lot of conservatives are in denial of that. on the other hand when you had on your network this week you had lawrence o'donnell and martin bashir talking about the gulf stuff. lawrence o'donnell said this isn't to tie the president to tiger woods and his skirt chasing. so it's possible to look at this andering that the republicans say and read a racial angle into it. in fact, republicans have lots of objections to the president and they also have real substantive policy

disagreements. you need to be careful to not go overboard and assume that every objection to the president or more than there are related. >> part of it when we're doing this kind of textural analysis, there's the bill clinton. i was going to make the point, we don't know which of these work in terms of swing voters out there or anyone voting for or against the president. >> although i would say this. the welfare ads have proliferated and keep getting run so i think they're working. >> who are they working on? this is one of the really confounding things about the particular campaign is when are they going to stop appealing to the base? when are they going to stop pan diring to the base because i don't believe there are a lot of swing voters out there. the main concern is the economy.

they're not particularly resentful of obama who are hearing these attacks and thinking, yeah, that's going to sway me. >> he said this in this presentation when he was talking to american crosscrosswards. let me turn to mitt romney's speech because that's the first time we saw a real genuine appeal to not the base. that speech -- here's, first of all, romney talking about his own "up by the bootstraps" story. take a look. >> i grew up in detroit in love with cars and wanted to be a car guy like my dad, but by the time i was out of school i realized that i had to go out on my own, that if i stayed around michigan in the same business i'd never really know if i was getting a break because of my dad. i wanted to go someplace new and prove myself. >> "out on my own" is a great

line. the place he went to that wasn't mentioned in the speech was harvard university where he went to get a law degree -- by the way, we went to get a law degree and mba. >> striking out. >> when they -- >> exactly. it's like a frontieresman. >> what he meant is his parents were not in the dorm. >> that's right. but then -- so that i think was the relatable part of it. then the next part of the speech in terms of talking to obama voters, i thought this was the most effective line in the whole speech and this is him talking about your -- your, again, like thinking of speaking to precisely the obama -- your regrets or your disagreement with the president. take a look. >> hope and change had a powerful appeal, but tonight i'd ask a simple question. if you felt that excitement when you voted for barack obama, shouldn't you feel that way now

that he's president obama? >> you know there's something wrong with the job he's done as president when the best feeling you had for him was the day you voted for him. >> i agree with you, chris. i think that's why they're making a mistake. i don't know how the election will turn out but i think there is a better path for them to have followed. obama is so vulnerable. there's a great deal of disappointment on the left with barack obama. everybody knows the economy is in trouble. i assumed he was going to pivot after he got in nomination but he didn't. if they had pounded the table on economy and jobs he would have made his business background that much more of an advantage.

we were talking about this in the green room. the right-winged republican party has nowhere else to go either and i think that that would have been a better path. >> i think he did pivot a little bit. >> he did a little. basically with paul ryan and with the way he's run the campaign so far, it's not that big of a pisht. >> let me say there are a lot of people who have health insurance that didn't have, people who are working for car companies that would have closed, people that are on -- who are on -- who got a government contract through the recovery act, who the best day was. the day they voted for obama. >> gays and lesbians in the military. the calcium they take because they don't take it with food. switch to citracal maximum plus d. it's the only calcium supplement that can be taken with or without food. that's why my doctor recommends citracal maximum.

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working for car companies that would have closed, people that ♪ why not make lunch more than just lunch? with two times the points on dining in restaurants, you may find yourself asking why not, a lot. chase sapphire preferred. there's more to enjoy. david sirota, your thoughts on it.

>> my point is i guess i didn't expect it but i thought it would have been a good move had he pivoted to i'm governor mitt romney. that, is look at my record in massachusetts where he could have -- i guess he's already criticized obama's health care bill. he can't do it as his own but he could have said here are some things i did with corporate health care and tax holes and here are things that are moderate and appealing that i can do as president. we haven't seen that pivot and i think that's a fundamental shift in republican long term, that we're not seeing republican candidates turn back to the middle. in the case of romney, he actually has somewhat of a moderate record to turn back to as opposed to just rhetoric. >> right. >> i don't know. this might be the last gasp of the dog whistle if i can mix metaphors. >> you're dying there but you have a dog whistle in your

throat. >> i think that this is not working. whatever they're doing right now is not actually working. with the way things are, this should not be difficult for romney. he keeps going back to the base, keeps going back to the base. he keeps hitting obama but is trying to be likeable and favorable. >> you know, the other thing is beat the current president is hard. as bad as the economy is, things have gotten better, you know, relative to where they were, the incumbent is the incumbent and barack obama is an able politician. he's well liked. that's why the other two-step they're doing is hi's a perfectly good guy. here's the -- here's the "i

wanted him to succeed" line which is part of his own theme. you know, i'm not against him personally. he wanted the best. here he is saying he wished the president had succeeded. >> i wish president obama had succeeded because i want america to succeed. >> i can't help but note in 2009 it was a little bit of a different message. >> i want liberal policies to fail, i want him to put in place a health care plan. i want him to fail on his cap and trade program as lodge as china and brazil and indonesia are involved in it but i want him to succeed as president in keeping our economy, keeping us freerk bringing soldiers home from iraq and afghanistan but i

don't want that to succeed. >> it's not that it's just close. i agree it's difficult to oust an incumbent president. even with the black folk where obama's always going to get the overwhelm majority of the black vote, i never saw -- >> strong poll. >> i never saw a poll before -- a national poll where somebody got zero percentage of the vote and he got zero percentage of the african-american vote. there's no reason for any republican candidate to do that poorly with those three groups. >> i ee going to be interesting to see. i think in the paul ryan speech which i thought substantively it was money dashs, there was this one great image of the college student. >> the faded poster. >> and he can't find a job. this is exactly the right line of attack for them, and i think

that's exactly because the president's message is four more years of the same. he hasn't laid out what he's going to do differently in the second term that he did in the first term. >> i think ana marie is right. on social policy and certain areas, there are constituencies that are satisfied with what they've gotten. but i think their satisfied with the president is small, even let. >> here's an interesting comparison. when democrats are running into problems they can go to their base because the base actually matches with the economic grievances of the whole country. mitt romney is trying to make this into a 1992 bill clinton or that's what he should be doing when it comes to the economy. he goes to his base, but in

order to go to the republican base, what you're going with is not necessarily matches with what the country wants. you have to go to them on hard core immigration policies, et cetera, et cetera. >> or you go to them on never cutting medicare. >> welfare were a very popular policy and still is. and if the president were still, in fact, tries to cut the work requirement in welfare, that would be a huge gift for romney. that was one of newt gingrich's messages. >> romney going to his base saying i want to protect medicare. >> making an argument to his base, that's why not -- you're

strug bulg some days you'll benefit from me. the focus of the speech was domestic policy but i thought the your all speech was gobsmacking, the flat form and everything. the only sub version came from clint eastwood right after this. with stain-blocker from the home depot... ...the best selling paint and primer in one that now eliminates stains. so it paints over stained surfaces, scuffed surfaces, just about any surface. what do you say we go where no paint has gone before, and end up some place beautiful. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. get $5 off one gallon cans of our best paint, including behr ultra, now through september 5th.

i think you mentioned something about having a target date to bring everybody home and you give the target date and mr. romney asked the sensible question. he said why are you giving a date now, why don't you bring them home tomorrow morning. >> wherein clint eastwood against the republican national convention bringing the troops

home tomorrow morning. the eastwood thing is so bizarre and we've chewed it over the last few days. i thought it was -- i really thought it was disrespectful. i'm not a big "oh, respectful president" but talking down to a chair and lecturing to a schoolboy. i thought he was vulgar and disrespectful and just gross. >> and the caricature doesn't run through. usually good comedy is based in truth. >> i don't want to sift through it. i thought it was bizarre and disrespectful and insulting in kind of a deep core way. that said, the afghan line was fascinating to me and the reason it was fascinating to me was the sheer 200-proof neocon bell a coste of the last part of the romney speech. of all the things to end your speech on. i mean to go into this rev errey

about all the places that you want to basically start something with, check out how this -- how this sounded. >> america, he said, dictated to other pretties. so allies like israel under the bus, banning friends in poland. we'll honor america's democratic ideals because a free world is a more peaceful world. that america, that united mirk will preserve a military so strong no nation would ever dare to test it. >> so that's the message -- clint eastwood gets everyone to cheer. we have 87,000 strotroops in afghanistan tomorrow morning and not one message about afghanistan. if they had not made one mention

of the current war of which we are engaged that would be the drudge headline, the fox headline, that would have dominated the entire coverage. >> you said you missed the days when they were the nonwhining party but they didn't recognize the troops. they're out there, doing what they're doing, they're doing their jobs, protecting our country and the ideals of this country and this was a remarkably free of that, you know, also i was going to say condoleezza rice's speech was the big headline for me. it was a remarkable speech but it was a litany of all the places we're going to go war.

it doesn't fit into we've got to go back. >> whatever it is. >> that goes through the prism of to restore american preeminence. this is what we have to do. barack obama has destroyed preeminence and we got he went ounlt and apologized to people, apologized to the world. >> he did not. that's like the welfare clap, that's ridiculous. >> the point is if you see everything through we have to go back to before this time when this president who is the other is trying to make us the other, then everything makes sense. >> but this convention was a completely reality-free zone and that part of the speech was just kratzy and filled with lies. you mentioned the idea of

throwithrow ing israel under the buzz. that's absolutely untrue i don't find romney as a bellicose guy who's going to get us involved in a lot of wars. i had a little exposure to him when i worked with his running mate in 2002. i think the idea is the management consulting leader is basically correct. i think he has to view this stuff as a time and money suck. i can't imagine he wants to spend his presidency with a war in the middle east. >> also if you mention afghanistan, you get into how much it costs and the dead clock m . >> i want to disagree strongly because i used to think like there. >> nothing like a convert. >> the huge policy different tweens barack obama and hillary clinton was the mandate. we literally had hour-long

debating about the mandate, okay. what happens? barack obama got into the office, they propose a health care plan with man date. the reason for that, they had a plan with the mandate. that's what mattered. it's the architects of the neocon era of the war, the last decade and that's what matters more than the preferences, beliefs. i really feel that strongly. >> there's not a space right now, i guess, perceuptually for mitt romney to actually make the argument he might make which is the argument that clint eastwood makes. >> he could make that argument but he's not. >> we're going to go around the table and get how many wars mitt romney will start right after

this break.

since mitt romney mentioned dictators in that speech, i think we should just mention the years of the obama presidency, and i don't think this is necessarily due to president obama, and in some cases clearly not due to him, but it hasn't been a good run of dictators. we should note in the obama administration, we have the various presidents, they've also given way to democratic election. so i think the point there is that going around the world starting fwad wars strengthens dictators and actualforeign for policies are laboring under

tyranny and not village to work about the demagoguery of the dig ta -- dictators of the american enemy. bad wars are not good for any leaders. witness lbj and vietnam, witness george w. bush and iraq. you know, anybody who is president or wants to be president of the united states ought to keep that in mind. >> i think he ran against a mandate because that was a politically wise thing for him to do and it helped separate him from his two opponents and he implemented it because it was what you do policy-wise. if you took this approach, you had to have the mandate. i think it makes sense for romney to sound as hawkish as

possible in order to please elements in the republican base but he tapped robert zellic to be in charge of his transition. he's considered within the realist/dovish position. we don't know. i think it would be a very romney thing to do to use rhetoric as a substitute for actually costly policy actions. >> josh is pro flip-flop. you may change your mind. >> if your position is bad, then, yes. >> that's mccain's line. changed my mind. i would also note since we ran from that list, the american government under george w. bush and very president obama was colluding. i don't want to give too much credit to the president or the american power in bringing down

him when he was a key ally that we've been sort of propping up. >> think it's frightening that we know the least amount about mitt romney's opinion on foreign policy. what happens if they do and no one cares? that's up next. venture miles for their "destination wedding." double miles you can "actually" use. but with those single mile travel cards... [ bridesmaid ] blacked out... but i'm a bridesmaid. oh! "x" marks the spot she'll never sit. but i bought a dress! a toast... ...to the capital one venture card. fly any airline, any flight, anytime. double miles you can actually use. what a coincidence? what's in your wallet? [ all screaming ] watch the elbows ladies.

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"usa today" said paul ryan's acceptance speech at the republican convention contained several false claims and misleading statements. "associated press" says paul ryan takes factual shortcuts in speech. take a look at what happened minutes. >> our team at cnn has added wolf already. >> there's a kind of ideological amnesia here on the part of paul ryan. >> markedly seven or eight points. i'm sure the fact checkers will have some opportunity to check. >> i think the fact checkes wil be point. >> there are some moments where people are wondering if we were completely truthful. >> do you think the speech was trubltful and in the end does it really matter. >> that's the question. republican presidential

candidate mitt romney himself has gone beyond the convenient politics as usual lie with his month-long insistence that president obama waived the work requirement for welfare when, in fact, that isn't true. president obama said if states want to experiment with new ways to fulfill the work requirement they would have to prove their plans would move more into jobs than the consistent policies do. there was a headline on tuesday. rick santorum repeats inaccurate welfare attack on obama. romney pollster kneel newhouse told buzzfeed we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers. i think there's a good thing/bad thing happening here. i do. i think there's been -- there was a whole critique developed in the blogs during the bush years about the perils of false balance and, you know, i think

brad delong or paul crudman. i forget who came one this term on opinions differ as the perfect example of taking something that's not disputable and going to he said/she said and not independently disputing the fact. think that critique has been very effective. it has been effective. it has changed the posture and so we now have this fact-checking industry. we have the fact-check page, "the washington post," and everyone's running their fact checks and then the question is so then what, right? where are we now in this migration? what do you take away from the paul ryan speech? is it a moment of victory for this line in that we're all saying there's eight places where he said they were flat out untrue and misleading or disingenuous or does it show the limitations of this mode that they're going to keep doing it? >> well, opinions. >> opinions differ. >> dick cheney said deficits

don't matter and republicans now believe facts don't matter, but i think they're wrong and i think just because of this fact-checking industry that you're talking about, the danger is that you get sort of tarred with this idea that you're not truthful, you know, that it's lyin' ryan or whatever. what i think is important now because media -- media don't determine electioelections. what's important is for democrats to make hay out of this. it's been established that this is a genuine problem, not partisan when you're looking at it from the media perspective, but now the democrats have to come home and hammer this home. >> and i think that -- we were talking before the show, if you were campaigning for the president in 1900 you could say one thing to one audience and another thing to another audience and there wasn't necessarily a fact-checking to national media. it's almost like we've gone back to that a little bit because of

the architecture of the new media, that you can live in your own bubble now and you can get information from that bubble and the other people in the other bubble get their information and there's less and less crossover and there's less and less trust in anybody to arbitrate between those two bubbles. >> and this is great point. in terms of -- yeah, so in terms of the best of times things, there's a "runners world" story where he said he ran a marathon in less than three hours. essentially an elite runner. "runners world" pulled the record from the boston marathon and ryan said i was wrong about it. >> it matters to the person who was behind him. >> yes, the person who came in front. but, no, it highlights this thing. running for president in 1908 you go around to an event and someone owns a deli and someone would say, i used to own a deli.

my brother was in the war. my brother was in the war. then you have a fact-check problem in this hermetically sealed world. chuck todd, we were talking to him du monde live coverage that that's how the mitt romney people see it. it doesn't matter because the authority of the people who adjudicated has dissipated so much. check it out. >> whether you have this argument that they are able to sort of atook the fact-checkers, question a fact-checker, get the base of their parter, the activist base of their party to bomb, if you will, twitter bomb reporters, twitter bomb news media, they think they can floit above this. who knows. they may be right. but i thought that was the most fascinating part. they thing the credibility of the your all media is so low right now and that the idea that the media is so partisan in nature or polarized that they thing all of the fact checks have political impact on them for the fall campaign.

>> two things. if you tell a big enough lierks even your own people will have trouble defending it. >> the ryan speech stood out. it was really aggressive. >> but i totally with david's point. i think it's a great point. we do have these parallel worlds where you each get to create your own world. let's face it, nmsnbc is one world and fox is another world and you're not going to be able to watch both. i think that's kind of my hope is that sometimes it won't be filtered through -- you're rolling your eyes at me, like, people without -- >> yes, there's clearly an ideological -- well, aisle speak for mooichls people know i'm a

liberal, right. and there are certain biases that come along with that. you know, we -- you risk running -- when you say that as a statement of the way the world is -- >> i'm not trying to say the shape of the world, opinions difer. that's my only point. audiences are -- >> a person who exemplifies this, to understand how this works is to understand glenn beck today. glenn beck now operates since leaving fox news operates completely in his own world. >> literally, he owns everything. >> he owns gbtv. >> he's printing money, by the way. printing money. >> he's citing his own news service as the deliverer. he has 60,000, 70,000 people out at cowboy stadium, barely anybody outside that bubble noticed, but that's an example of people in the bubble. it doesn't matter if somebody else outside the bubble says

those facts are wrong. if you're inside the bubble, you're not going to know. >> another thing is this is all based on a relationship of trust. you trust glenn beck. if david sirota comes to you -- >> i don't trust glenn beck. >> know but if you trust him when he says the president is a scheming whatever, it's not crazy to go through the world that way. in fact, all of our understandings in the world come from this. >> i think there's limits to the lie, of course. the romney campaign is up with this ad based on this false claim of welfare reform. >> four ads. >> yes. they clearly viewed it as one of the most effective attacks. it was not mentioned at all in paul ryan's speech or mitt romney's speech. that lie is too brazen to directly associate with the candidate. >> i want to read thomas jefferson on fact-checking.

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we're talking about the era of the fact checker and how it deals with lies and distortions and manipulations. bob, i cut you off. >> there are a large amount of persuadable voters ow there. fact-checking or truth-telling becomes an important issue with these voters, and if among the voters they get the idea you just cannot be trusted, that cannot be good in a close election. so once again i think the republicans are making a mistake

there. >> there's a phrase used. and jay rosen who's written a lot about this and what you do with it. i want to read this quote from thomas jefferson. it's not about lying. it's about an environment in which you don't care if you get called out for the lie. so here's thomas jefferson who wishes there were fact checkers in his day. he's writing a letter to new york representative smith. wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. the british ministry has so long hired their gazette eries to repeat and model into every form lies about our being an anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the english nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. at the same time i want to sort of not get too celebratory of the fact checkers as an authority because they're just

another set of authority, and this -- this is where you get down to brass tacks and say, we're going to have fact checkers. the thing is fact checkers have been wrong. i have been fact checked by politico and they were wrong. rachel has had a bad experience with politifact. here's her talking about politifact. >> the president says thing a and thing b. politifact looks into it and decides thing a and thing b stated by the president are both true so on their truthometer, they rate their truth to half truth. politifact, you are fired. yo are undermining the word "fact" in the english language by pretending to it in your name.

the english language wants their word back. you are an em baurs minute. you have sullied it. you are fired. >> i love that clip. >> my goodness. >> she was right and she was totally right. here's the thing. getting to this bubble thing, i was wasn't guest hosting for rachel and we had senator brown on. he said my opponent is running this add and even politifact, independent fact checker has laid it on the line. i said, no, no, no, i don't trust politifact. this show doesn't trust politifact and we can't have that sort of situation. >> what's the expectation? that's what we we have to ask. what is thomas jefferson asking for? he's wishing for people to care if the facts are wrong. >> right. >> there were scientific studies

out a year ago that said a large swath of voters, when they're presented with facts that contradict their ideology, they actually dig in more on their own belief system. and i don't think it's just limited to conservatives. >> liberals do it too. >> absolutely. i learn it every day on the radio. you put a fact out there and people say, i'm not going to believe it. and you start debating whether the water is wet and the sky is blue. thing we're living in such a time where ideology has become so important in the public's mind, i'm ott this side or i'm on that side, red versus blue, that sadly what we're really lamenting is when we put the facts out there, one side if the facts are inconvenient is simply not accepting of the idea that it's a fact. >> i'm not going to go -- i'm not going to go that far. >> you seem to thing -- you're the optimist at the table. >> not only does it matter. i mean politifact -- rachel just destroyed it. the fact-checking world in

general, while it's significant, it's not the -- it's not the most important thing. the most important thing are -- is the stuff that we do. we're journalists, and we get our facts from reporting. and you have to have, you know, certain standards for yourself and you can understand that there's a lot of, you know, madness going on out there, but as long as you keep focused yourself on getting the message across, the totality will ultimately win out. i believe that. >> but i think it's sad commentary on journalism that fact-check has been outsourced. >> what's hilarious -- >> we're the fact checkers ourselves. >> it's interesting to watch, say, wolf blitzer talk about -- it's this amazing euphemism. he doesn't want to say there were seven misleading statements or distortions. he'll say there are places that the fact checkers will go into. part of that is that gets to the

limited effect then to the extent they have limited effect. there's some other little ghettoized world called fact checking, the ap headline that says paul line takes factual short cuts is worth more than a thousand fact checks. that's the news article. that's the news. it's not the independent fact checker. >> and i think the proliferation of fact checkers may have pushed reporters on this. reaction of the paul ryan speech, i thought, was handled very well and they were focused on the substantive facts and how they were not factual. >> currently we need to get ahead of the fact checkers. >> yes, that's the issue. >> i was really struck. i was down there in tampa and i watched the speech in the hall and i went to a party afterward and i'm talking to the other reporters and i said, i thought that speech was terrible. and repeatedly they said, really? i thought he was relatable and

an effective speech. and i said, no, i thought they were full of lies, and they go, well, yeah. there's this tendency that i think is important for the press to get past where you watch something like this and you sort of report on it like it's a sports game. >> or creator criticism. >> it was said on npr last week that the lying has become so accepted among journalists that it's almost not even a story anymore and to your point, you're exactly right. when you outsource fact checking outside journalism, where people really frame their opinions on things is what is baked into the coverage, what you can -- when there's a fact-check situation, it could be, well, it could be this set of facts or that set of facts and is this outlet credible or that outlet credible when it's baked into places where you don't even recognize, that's why it's important. when you take it out of journ

journalism and put it over here, what is it? >> right. if the next-day article about paul ryan speech is distinct from the fact-check story it runs, then what is the news content or value of the next-day story about the paul ryan speech? mega-rich newspaper publisher are shaping politics and maybe even election outcomes. we'll talk about it. the answers may surprise you after this. e economy needs manufacturing. machines, tools, people making stuff. companies have to invest in making things. infrastructure, construction, production. we need it now more than ever. chevron's putting more than $8 billion dollars back in the u.s. economy this year. in pipes, cement, steel, jobs, energy. we need to get the wheels turning. i'm proud of that. making real things... for real. ...that make a real difference. ♪ >> announcer: meet mary. she loves to shop online with her debit card, and so does bill, an identity thief who

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paying attention to the presidential election you tend to overlook what's going on at the state level. people still heavily rely on local news outlets for their political news coverage and that can be a problem when more and more local newspapers are being purchased by rich businessmen. david sirota has a piece in this

month's "harper's" which speaks to this issue. as the newspaper's industry is collapsing, the new crop of citizen cain-like publishers who own these lonely gazettes have a massive amount of power. so reuters writes, quote, if newspapers are indeed dying stars in the media firmament, many of them have reached the red-giant stage, that is, a brief phase just prior to expiration when their reach becomes exponentially larger. david, i thought the article was fantastic. people should go to news stands and pick up "harper's". there's an abstract. you're going to have to do the old-fashioned thing and pay for the content. it struck me that we do spend, a, how much we think about national media, and, b, how overpopulated the national media is compared to the local media,

and, c, how much the voters are going to decide an election in the denver suburbs, for instance, or the virginia suburbs, although they have "the washington post" there, how much they're going to be reading newspapers and how much power the newspaper owners have. >> there's a lack of competition. we're live hello in a team where most media markets are one media newspaper market so the owner of the paper that's left standing has a disproportionate amount of pow ir. it's no that they don't have competition. it's that they can shape the news, not having to worry that a competitor will have an alternate set of facts, that a newspaper owner can feel more, i guess, more latitude to bake into the coverage what they want to bake into without fear that the competitor will call them out. there's also the issue where we

think we're living in a time where there's a proliferation of news outlets. there are more and more that remain, television, radio, internet websites are basing their coverage on what's originally reported in a newspaper. the newspapers still have the moment amount of journalists on the ground. >> they're the first impression. i mean when you hear a story that comes out of some place, particularly if it's something that goes viral, you know, some, for instance, the zombie face-eating story, right, that becomes a national story. it's reported first by a local media outlet. >> that's right. >> and that's the case for a lot of stories. >> that's right. you can trace so many stories back to an original newspaper hit and so then it becomes a question of what does the news owner want to put in that coverage and what -- i would argue the most important point, what are they saying is and is not news. when a newspaper owner says or is known to be connected to a certain political ideology,

certain political allies in a given media market, the reporters in the newsroom tend to know -- i know what my owner's politics are. i don't want to get cross-eyed with the owner knowing there are layoffs, so i'm going to avoid certain stories that may tick off the owner and i'm going to do stories that may ingratiate the owner. >> your article on sins of omission, i thought it was fascinating. there's a few examples you give. let's say there's some politician who the owner is friends with and there's some scandal, in the old days of it, if they were too cozy, they would d a front page story and the "denver post" would be embarrassed into covering it. now without that, the "denver post" can say nothing to report on it, they never report it it

and people never hear of it. >> you rarely get a smoking gun. >> explain. >> they talked about a school getting into the hands of wall street. this story came out four days in "the new york times" about the deal he cut when he was superintendent of schools. it came out four days before a very closely contest democratic primary where the senator appointed was running for democratic primary. 87% of colorado voters had already voted. that story was essentially unreported in the "denver post" and not surprisingly he's a closely idealized politician with another. you look a decision decided by less than 15,000 votes that essentially made a u.s. senator that made a story that arguably if it with us in the "denver post" and covered if the real

way might have changed 15,000 votes. you have a situation where they're able to sway an entire u.s. senate election. >> this isn't just denver. there are lots of towns. in fact, philadelphia, which is a great newspaper town that's gone through a lot of consolidation is about to have a new ownership crew. we're going to talk to one of the new owners of the philadelphia enquirer right after we take this break. and a choice. take advil, and maybe have to take up to four in a day. or take aleve, which can relieve pain all day with just two pills. good eye.

which can relieve pain all day with just two pills. my name is adam frucci and i'm the i love new technology,om. so when i heard that american express and twitter were teaming up, i was pretty interested.

turns out you just sync your american express card securely to your twitter account, tweet specific hashtags, and you'll get offers on things you love. this totally changes the way i think about membership. saving money on the things you want. to me, that's the membership effect. nice boots! because we were talking about the "denver post." you reached out but he declined. this is a former "denver post" reporter susan green who talked about working for the publisher. in my own experience, staying true to the "denver post" brand required a certain type of stockholm syndrome. it meant internalizing what you figure boss and your boss's boss might deem inconvenient to

print, say, before they hop on the train to frontier days with a posse of politicians squl spo. i want to bring in ed rendell, former governor of philadelphia. not an actual owner if i'm right about that, governor rendell. thanks for joining us. >> thanks. i want to say i've been listening the last half hour but it's fascinating. there are essentially quick points i want to make. >> please. >> truth still matters to those who decide the elections and who will decide this presidential election. it may not matter to the 40% on either side of the base but at 20% in the middle it does matter. second, in ours business we ha something called third-party validation and newspaper can be still great third-party

validaters. i know what you're saying about takeovers but "the wall street journal" has called out republicans on incorrect statements. i was at a debate yesterday, and i said the effective corporate tax rate was 17%. someone said that's wrong. i said it was published by "fortune," study of the 2,000 biggest corporations. do you think "fortune" is -- >> that's great point because it c queues s up the situation. if you were an evil jegenius wh wanted to control the minds of the american public the thing you would do is go and buy a newspaper like has happened in philadelphia. i want to hear you talk about it from your side which is if i'm a conservative in philadelphia and i hear that ed rendell is

getting people together to buy the local paper, i'm thinking we're screwed. the conservatives are never going to get a fair shot in the local paper or ed rendell's buddies aren't going to be investigated if they're doing something wrong. that this is going to potentially be no a perception racket. >> he said hedge funders are going to sell. can you put together a local consortium to keep the people here. that's what i did. people not caring about their specific ideology and some of the people are very conservative as well as some people are very liberal put it together, local ownership. i turned down a finder's fee which was, i think, $1.8 million. my son has never for griffin gir

doing that. i saw their point. i still intend to be active in politics so i withdrew. the new hoeners signed a "hands-off" agreement where they agreed not to have any interference on the editorial page. interestingly since they've taken over, there have been stories critical of the new owners or entities that the new owners own themselves. so i think you can do it right. >> there was the idiot ed rendell turns down $1.8 million finder's fee. >> i think third-party validation is important and that's the purpose that we serve but to say you picked people from both sides that doesn't get to what the problem is which is actually like business interests transcend to party lines. local connections are more

important than any kind of party intervention. another, i have to say, if you swear up and down not to interview with the newsroom, that's well and good but the problem isn't that you're interfering actively, it's that people know. >> that depends on the good faith of the reporters and the ability to test the stand aileen agreement. >> my question to you, governor, would be how can you -- how can the owners of the inquirer, how can they actually reassure those reporters at a time when there are going to be future layoffs, as a time when a reporter may say, well, i eefrm glad i've got these reassurances. if i've stuck my head up and published something i know the owner doesn't want to own, how does the owner rew e assure that reporter. >> i think this owner ship did this by hiring bill marimeau and

know he would not be influenced or get his backup, even a hand of influence by the new ownership group, so i think that matte matters. look. i think about the alternative. what's the alternative here? how are newspapers going to survive? my belief is the only way they're going to survive is sports teams are owned by rich well manufacture meaning people who were willing to lose money on the enterprise because it was fun or entertaining or whatever. what's the alternative? >> "the guardian" is an alternative. >> how long are they going to be arou around. >> what about these guys who want to buy papers?

what about setting up foundations. >> i think smaller newspapers, where we don't have one dominant news organization in a city where we go back to the time of the penny press. i think that's possible. >> do you know how long it's been since we had that in philadelphia? >> i would ask you. if you were run for office in pennsylvania and your political opponents owned the biggest newspaper in the state, what would you be saying on this program? >> well, look. we have that situation in pennsylvania. mr. scaffe owns the pittsburgh tribune. that's a fact of life and you live with it. by the way, most people understand that about the tribune. >> right. but that's a competitive situation. there are two papers in pittsburgh. so i mean -- >> that's the key point here, that the -- because we should

make clear, newspaper owners have always used their -- particularly on the editorial page. >> forever, forever. >> chicago columnist for john kass. i was at a convention wasn't. >> he said no one ever bought a bicycle they didn't want to ride. that is very true. more on this and future newspapers right after we take a break. companies have to invest in making things. infrastructure, construction, production. we need it now more than ever. chevron's putting more than $8 billion dollars back in the u.s. economy this year. in pipes, cement, steel, jobs, energy. we need to get the wheels turning. i'm proud of that. making real things... for real. ...that make a real difference. ♪

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inquirer" was extremely stri ll conservative and people felt -- >> not just conservative, brian tyranny wea tyranny tierney. >> you've got go back to the fact that there was a hands-off. when brian tierney was running it, it reindoorsed my re-election and almost qualified me for sainthood and the first time they had to endorse, i was endorsing a democrat pat muff fi and the in choirer er editorial board endorse ad a woman kathle kane. the point is there's still integrity. chris i have heard you call out our side, how many democrats,

myself included, when we krit siechl something the obama administration has done. i'm not a fan of "the wall street journal" but i give them tremendous credit for holding people's feet to the fire. >> then a followup question on that. you're right. there can still be integrity depending on ownership structure but what about the other side of the coin, the public's perception? when a reader finds out that the person who owns the newspaper was a pr executive, doesn't that hurt the credibility of the paper? >> sure. it creates the presumption. >> rebutable presumption. >> thank you so much for joining us this morning. it was great to have you. >> near and dear to my heart. >> i think the new editor of "the philadelphia inquirer" should signal his seriousness by a big ed rendell takedown. what do we now we didn't know

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so what to we know now we didn't know last week? we now know while hurricane a 150-yacht for an event with his $1 million plus bundlers. the yacht owned by gary morris, a developer, was flying the cayman islands flag. it's registered in the islands and we know that morris who was previously for bush and mccain has given $450,000 to the super pac refor ostore our future. we know we shouldn't expect him to be transparent about the wealth he meets with on cayman yachts. we now know that lindsay graham actually told "the washington post" this about the republican party this week.

quote, the demographics race we're losing badly. we are not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term. this country is getting less white according to projected census data. we also know in a recent nbc/"wall street journal" poll romney got 0% support from black supporters. people in the seats on the floor looked pretty homogenous. officials are discriminating against minorities and the disenfranchised when it comes to the right to vote. texas will appeal two rulings that came down this week. on tuesday a federal district court said when the state of texas drew up proposed new electoral maps, that redistricting had been, quote, enacted with discriminatory purpose. on thursday another panel of federal district court judges struck down texas's new voter i.d. law and said requiring voters who don't have one of the five specified types of i.d. to get an election identification

certificate would involve financial costs that would, quote, impose strict unforgiving burdens on the poor. on tuesday, a federal judge struck down new restrictions on voter registration in florida clearing the way for voter registration efforts by the league of women voters and rock the vote, a group that focuses on signing up young voters. and yesterday in ohio, a federal judge blocked a new republican law that would allow early voting for only some ohio citizens, those in the military and those living abroad. the judge found the law unconstitutionally valued some votes above others. we know political incentives for voter disenfranchised for republicans. now we know the only hope of axis l access lies with the courts. i will begin with you, mr. bob herbert. >> well, if you're giving the speech of your life, don't invite a mega hollywood star like clint eastwood to come in who will just stomp all over your appearance. >> we didn't talk much about the

clint eastwood thing. i -- here's the person -- >> you keep saying that and yet talk about it. >> i know. here's the story i want, the person who went and bought the chair. like that's the deep throat of this operation. really? >> there's a bit in "the new york times." >> basically right before he went on stage, he went to some, like, backstage low-level staffer. i'd like a stool. the guy was, like, i thought he wanted to sit. so he brought it out. >> there you go. that's not that interesting. i thought it would be an amazing story. david, what do you know? >> we've been talking about the media and lack of resources for reporting on real news. we know roughly 15,000 journalists went to the republican convention, are going to go to the democratic convention. jeff jarvis, professor from city university in new york has estimated somewhere between $50 million and $60 million of journalism resources went into covering what is essentially a scripted infomercial at a time -- >> except for clint eastwood. >> -- except for clint eastwood at a time when those news

organizations plead poverty in justifying not covering real news actually happening in communities throughout the country. >> this is, i think, the biggest problem right now with the media is the overpopulation of the national beat. particularly the national political beat. and that's partly a demand-side issue because that's where there's a lot of readers in that. and that's partly what readership wants and pays for. >> it requires less expertise. >> yes. so there's this real imbalance between the beat -- you know, you see national lit cal outlets expanding all the time. layoffs are happening about people covering baltimore politics. >> i'm going to miss ron paul missing from the national stage for a lot of reasons. one of them is we're not going to talk about the drug war anymore, probably. it's one of the policies mitt romney has failed to give us any information about. we can look at who is advising him on this. and one of his biggest donors and one would presume kitchen cabinet advisers is a man named

mel sembler who founded a string of teen -- hard, you know, tough-love rehabs which were closed down after there were allegations of torture, abuse and rape. he and his wife still are active in the anti-medical marijuana programs and just trying to basically any kind of decriminalization of any drug. that's the kind of policy that we would kind of get. >> that's a good bit of information i did not know. thank you for that. >> now i know because i was one of those 15,000 reporters in tampa. i now know what a gay bar at the republican convention looks like, 2012. yes, actually. i've never seen so many straight men in a gay bar, and they're all dressed like alex p. keaton. it's hard to tell who's actually gay in this setting. it was in many ways like any gay bar. there was a lot of rihanna on the sound track and go-go boys. >> continue. >> what identified it as a republican gay bar was the go-go dancers were wearing t-shirts

and long pants. it's like -- >> that is a great bit of color. that would be the opening. in the josh mayor magazine piece about the rnc, the opening scene is the go-go dancers in t-shirts and long pants. all right. that's awesome. my thanks to bob herbert, david siroto, anna marie cox and josh from bloomberg view. thank you for joining us today for "up." join us tomorrow sunday morning at 8:00 when i'll have a special panel of democratic congressional panels in close races including the man running against paul ryan in wisconsin. coming up next is melissa harris-perry. her retort to the rnc, all the highlights of the bold and the simply bizarre. did the gop make any headway closing the gender gap and a one-on-one on how a dog whistle really works. that's melissa harris-perry

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